14:37 Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)

With COP26 in Glasgow later this year, it is great to see that the UK is leading the world in promoting new green initiatives to help to safeguard the environment. Protecting their citizens is a key role for any Government. I welcome the tough new measures that will be introduced, including the new draft victims bill, legislation for greater internet safety and a fairer immigration system, and tough measures to deal with people smugglers.

[Source]

15:25 The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)

As one United Kingdom, we will be a force for good in the world, leading the campaigns at next month’s G7 summit in Cornwall for global vaccination, education for girls and action on climate change. As one United Kingdom, we will host the UN climate change conference in Glasgow and help to rally ever more countries to follow our example and pledge to achieve net zero by 2050. As one United Kingdom, we will continue with ever-greater intensity to connect talent with opportunity, mobilising the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the British people to achieve their full potential at last. It is an enormous task, made more difficult by the pandemic and yet more urgent, but it is the right task for this country now. I know the country can achieve it, and this Queen’s Speech provides us with the essential tools to do it. I commend the Queen’s Speech to the House.

[Source]

15:45 Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)

With the powers we have, the SNP Scottish Government are doing everything they can to mitigate this damage and seeking to protect our businesses. We believe a fair recovery should follow the example of the Biden Administration: it must be investment-led. At the centre of the SNP’s recovery plans is an economic transformation that would have fair work and the climate emergency at its heart. This will include an investment of £500 million to support new jobs and to retrain people for the jobs of the future, as well as funding the young person’s guarantee of a university, college, apprenticeship or training place or a job for every young person who wants it. The SNP Government will also embark on a massive programme of capital investment. Over £33 billion will be invested over the next five years in our national infrastructure, directly supporting 45,000 jobs. An SNP Government will deliver a further 100,000 homes by 2032, with investment of £3.5 billion over this Parliament, which will support 14,000 jobs a year.

Ahead of the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November, enhancing and expanding our world-leading climate action policies will be a key priority. The SNP Government will deliver a green transport revolution by providing free bikes to all school-age children who cannot afford them, removing the majority of fossil-fuel buses from public transport, ramping up investment in active travel, and bringing ScotRail into public ownership with the aim of decarbonising the rail network by 2035. There is also a commitment to decarbonising the heating of 1 million homes by 2030.

[Source]

16:19 Meg Hillier (Labour)

I want to touch on some of the environmental issues that are touched on in the Bill, although we do not yet know the detail. I am pleased that the Environment Bill is being carried over, but let us hope that we see more detail and more meaningful steps towards action on this issue. The Public Accounts Committee has spent some time over the last year looking at environmental and climate change issues, and we have found the Government wanting. They have been promising the Earth with big broad-brush headlines, but potentially really damaging the Earth through their inaction. There is no planet B, so we have to get it right now. Ambitious projects such as stopping production of petrol and diesel cars within nine years make great headlines, but there is a lot to be done in the nine years between now and then, and very little detail. So it is vital that that is got right, and I think that there is, or should be, cross-party consensus across the aisle that we need to tackle this generational issue for our planet.

On green jobs, again the Government make promises, but I have been looking at this for at least a decade. With COP26 on the way, we can expect a flurry of stage-managed headlines, but the detailed plans to achieve all these things are not there. Over the last decade or so, we have seen the privatisation of the UK Green Investment Bank, and even the removal of its absolute requirement to deliver green investment; we have seen the failed green deal, which cost over £100,000 per loan; and we have seen a fourth contest launch for carbon capture and storage, which would help to tackle some of our energy intensive industries. The first three fell at the first hurdle.

[Source]

16:33 Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)

That shows what we as Conservatives know: the old argument that we can either deal with climate change and protect the environment, or have economic growth, is completely false. As this country has shown in recent years, we can have economic growth, and deal with our emissions and protect our environment. That is what we will be doing in the future.

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Does she agree that this will particularly impact on the delivery of green homes and getting to net zero?

[Source]

16:46 Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

Liberal Democrats want us to emerge from covid as a more caring country. The Liberal Democrat vision of a fairer, greener, more caring country is the programme that our country needs now. Fairer, with an economic recovery that leaves no one behind. Backing small businesses to create jobs of the future, so that people have genuine opportunities, wherever they live. Supporting the self-employed, instead of cruelly excluding 3 million people from Government help during the pandemic. Greener, with investment in secure, well-paid green jobs of the future in every part of the UK, and a climate change action programme far more ambitious than the rhetoric of a Prime Minister who once wrote that a wind turbine

I could not agree more. Having overseen the carbon budgets as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and having had to work with some colleagues on the Benches opposite, I know we have to hold them to account, as they will wriggle out of the law.

Liberal Democrats are proud to have the best record on climate change action of any party in this country, and we will keep campaigning for more action on climate.

Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that it was his party that authorised the changing of Drax B power station to wood pellets, which are now harvested from virgin forests in America and brought across to the United Kingdom, and now require a subsidy of £1 billion a year? Is that the kind of green energy that he talks about?

Another reason why I find this programme for government so dreadfully disappointing is that it further entrenches the Government’s isolationist tendencies. It is not just the recovery-threatening EU trade deal that is bad for Britain and bad for business, but the shockingly poor diplomacy ahead of hosting COP26—the crucial international climate change talks. Having led the UK delegation at three UN climate change talks and helped the UK and the EU to create their position ahead of the most successful climate change talks ever, in Paris in 2015, I am deeply alarmed by what I see and hear about the preparations for Glasgow.

Let me give some examples. Diplomatic relations with the EU ahead of COP26: throw some insults, send a warship. Relations with the US now that, thankfully, we now have a President who gets climate change: reduce the size of our Army and ignore President Biden’s warning over Northern Ireland. Relations with the developing world: slash our aid budget in the middle of a global pandemic. To cut foreign aid—to hurt the world’s poorest—is disgraceful in and of itself, but it is shocking during a pandemic. To undermine Britain’s global leadership just when the world’s future depends on it the most is nothing short of a catastrophe.

The Liberal Democrats want a plan for recovery that is fair, green and more caring, with no one left behind. Anyone who has seen their business fail or who has lost their job must be supported to get back on their feet. Any young person who has been robbed of months of their education must be supported with educational and emotional recovery. We want to see investment in reliable, well-paid green jobs, not only to tackle the climate emergency, but to power our recovery. We want a well-resourced NHS and social care system ready to meet the challenges of the future, and we want proper recognition of and support for the 11 million carers in our country to help heal our nation, not least for bereaved families and children.

[Source]

17:43 Jeremy Corbyn (Other)

I finish with this: the world is at a crossroads. It is at a crossroads of inequality, injustice and poverty, which covid has shown. It has shown us the need for universal healthcare around the world, to make us all healthy. It has also shown the need for us to urgently address the environmental crisis. The Paris COP went some way forward, in that most countries signed up for it, although they have not fully implemented it. We need net zero by 2030, but we also need investment to ensure that the jobs that are created tomorrow are environmentally sustainable, as well as economically sustainable, and that we have economic planning that has sustainability at its heart and is not about destroying biodiversity, and polluting our rivers and oceans. This is about putting recycling, reusing and protecting our natural world at the very heart of what we do. I was proud on 1 May 2019 to propose to Parliament that we declare a climate emergency. It was agreed, without a vote. We were the first Parliament in the world to do this. Let us go to COP saying that we have carried that out, that we will achieve net zero by 2030, and that we will share the technologies around the world and have a trade and economic strategy that sustains the world, rather than damages it.

[Source]

18:10 Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru)

In that spirit, I hope the Government will recognise the need to correct the stymieing inconsistencies in the devolution settlement and devolve the Crown Estate in Wales to Wales—as has occurred, of course, in Scotland. Control over our natural resources and their rent is essential not only for their sustainable management, but to help generate the capital investment necessary to deliver our net zero future. The change would improve upon the current restrictive borrowing limits imposed by the Treasury on the Welsh Government and better connect Wales’s natural heritage and resources with their sustainable use and production.

[Source]

19:02 Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]

While we debate a programme of legislation for the next 12 months, it is understandably difficult to lift our eyes to targets set for at least three Parliaments from now, but the actions taken by the Government now will be crucial to how and whether we can get back on track to meet their ambitious interim target for emissions reduction, announced as our nationally determined contribution for the COP26 conference this November. The draft statutory instrument setting the level of the UK’s sixth carbon budget for the period from 2033 to 2037 was laid shortly before Prorogation and must be put to the House for approval by the end of June. It envisages a 78% reduction in UK total emissions by 2035, compared with the 1990 baseline.

There is no greater environmental protection target than the one the House will shortly be invited to agree. It does not require primary legislation and so was not in the Gracious Speech. The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), recently told the Environmental Audit Committee that the Government cannot spend their way to net zero. I happen to believe that while there is a place for legislation, we cannot rely on legislation to achieve net zero. The strategies and measures to be published by Ministers in this Session ahead of COP26 will be crucial in setting the policies required to deliver climate change targets over several Sessions to come.

We should also look to the net zero review by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer for how he plans to balance as equitably as possible the contribution of households, businesses and public funds to different elements of the transition to net zero. To paraphrase a renowned Finance Minister from another age, the Government’s objective must be to secure the largest possible reduction in emissions with the least hissing.

[Source]

19:10 Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) [V]

We do not need a culture war, but we are seeing too much populism from the Government, and the demonisation of various “out” groups. The Government’s plans for immigration are particularly toxic and pernicious in that regard. Experts estimate that, as a result of climate change, between 25 million and 1 billion people could be forced to leave their homes by 2050. Governments such as that of the UK must lead the way in supporting countries that are already suffering loss and damage.

Finally, I want to focus on climate change and the need for a green new deal. Despite the rhetorical commitment to the delivery of net zero by 2050, the Government do not have the policies and programmes in place to achieve that. As a co-signatory of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, I am deeply disappointed that the Government have chosen not to advance such legislation. A Bill that establishes a statutory framework for the bold, joined-up change that is necessary to fulfil the UK’s international climate responsibilities and to facilitate transition to a zero-carbon economy is greatly needed. Such a Bill has been drafted by climate and ecology experts and has the backing of more than 100 MPs, representing all Opposition parties. It has major public support.

Emerging from the pandemic, we will face a weakened economy, significant job losses and more entrenched inequalities. Time is running out to tackle the climate emergency, yet in doing so we could also build a future that we not only want, but need. We should learn the lessons from the past year, build a new society, invest in thousands of green jobs, and transform our economy to be both sustainable and equitable. Throughout history, periods of difficulty have sparked incredible change, from the new deal in the aftermath of the great depression, to the birth of the welfare state and the NHS after the second world war. We should be thinking and training big, and we need a recovery plan that better protects us in future.

Any new deal this time must be a green new deal, and any economic recovery stimulus must be for a green recovery. Experts increasingly stress the need for major investment in a green recovery, because addressing the climate emergency goes hand in hand with economic and social transformation. The Chancellor’s national stimulus, while significant, is not on the same scale as that of other G7 members. While I welcome the Government’s increased focus on skills, that must be channelled into supporting a green new deal. A green new deal could help us to create thousands of secure green jobs, extending our economy and reskilling workers. We must preserve our planet for future generations, and build an inclusive, ethical society for everyone.

[Source]

19:29 Sammy Wilson (DUP)

The second thing that I want to discuss is the commitment that the Government have made to setting “binding environmental targets”. I know that, ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, the Government are engaging in international virtue signalling, but there is no point in setting such targets unless they spell out what the impact will be on the people. I noted that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said in her speech today, “We can reduce CO 2 emissions and still have economic growth; we have done that.” The truth of the matter is, of course, that we have reduced CO 2 emissions by divesting ourselves of many of our heavy and energy-intensive industries, such as steel, aluminium and many others. It is not that the CO 2 emissions have ceased; we have simply moved them to another country.

If we are going to set targets to reduce CO 2 emissions, the Government must spell out how they are going to do that. Does more renewable energy mean that we add to the £12 billion a year that electricity consumers pay in their electricity bills for renewable energy subsidies? Does it mean greater restrictions on people’s ability to fly because we make flying—one of the big producers of CO 2 —more expensive? What impact will that have on people’s ability to go on their annual holiday? Does it mean we insist that people have more expensive ways of heating their houses? It is estimated to cost £20,000 to invest in heat pumps and so on to make a house energy-efficient. Are consumers going to pay that? The Committee on Climate Change says we will have to eat less dairy products and meat. Are we even going to tell people what their diet should be? If we are going to set these targets, then the Government have got to be honest. They cannot simply set a target and not spell out how it will impact on people’s choices and freedom, and what we would regard, in a free society, as the ways in which people can make those choices.

The Prime Minister said that he wants to put rocket fuel into the economy after the pandemic. I hope that it is rocket fuel and not a damp squib. My fear relates to issues about the Union. If the Government do not deal properly with the levelling-up programme and the divisive impact of the Northern Ireland protocol, as well as the impact that that has on Scottish nationalism, then he will not achieve that objective. If we continue to pursue these high-level climate change CO 2 -reducing targets, are we going to find more and more that people’s personal choices are affected, that fuel poverty increases as energy bills go up, and that we chase away energy-intensive industries and lose jobs? If we are going to move in that direction, I believe we do not have a Government who are free market, free choice and pro-Union, but a Government who act against all those fundamental principles of the Conservative party. That is why I want to see, and why I believe it is important that we see, the detail of the Queen’s Speech.

[Source]

19:50 Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) [V]

On my final note on planning, I cover the Somerset levels, and as you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, 12% of my constituency went under water in 2014. I say to the Government—not just for my area, but for the United Kingdom—that flooding, because we are on an island, is devastating. It is terrifying because we cannot control it, and we certainly cannot stop it when it gets away from us. I would ask the Government to make sure that adequate resources, legally and legislatively, are put into the system so that we can defend—because defend we must—against it. The days, as was the case pre-2014, when the Environment Agency says we will have managed retreat have to stop. We cannot do this, because if we do a lot of our country will be under threat. We cannot ignore climate change but, equally, we cannot ignore the damage that flooding can do. The defences around the Hinkley Point nuclear power station are staggering, and rightly so, but I have seen the cost of doing these things, and I cannot afford to leave Somerset County Council to do them, because it will make a pig’s ear of them. Therefore, I ask the Government to please look at this, along with the jobs, the skills and the rural updating, and also to make sure that places such as Somerset are properly covered by properly elected councillors, not by some supernumerary, out-of-touch, irrelevant bunch of people who really do not care. Long live the dragon, and may we slay the ones we do not like.

[Source]

20:39 Zarah Sultana (Labour)

Today, as we emerge from the pandemic, we, too, face crises like no other. We face a crisis of public health, with a Government who let bodies pile high in their thousands and underfunded the NHS for a decade. We face a crisis of poverty, inequality and unemployment, with a Government who hand out billions in dodgy contracts to wealthy Tory donors but refuse to give working-class kids food in the holidays. And looming over us is a climate crisis that threatens the future of us all. This is not a time to tinker around the edges or return to the old, unfair and unequal society and economic model that got us here in the first place. It is time to match the scale of the challenges we face with an ambition like that which the Labour Government had in 1945.

That is why at the heart of this Queen’s Speech should be a people’s green new deal, a state-led programme of economic transformation to build a country that can not only avert the climate emergency, but truly be one that works for the 99%, not just the 1%. It is a programme designed and discussed by trade unionists, think tanks, activists and policy experts that would create millions of well-paid, unionised, skilled green jobs. It would do so by mass investment in green technologies; expanding and electrifying public transport; building electric vehicles, with investments in gigafactories in places such as Coventry; creating a national care service; and retrofitting the country’s homes, cutting both costs and carbon. We would go from an economy controlled and run for profit to a society that is working for all of us. To do that, we need to bring industries into public ownership—rail, mail, water, energy and more—and we need to empower workers, which means repealing anti-trade union laws, so that the needs of many come before the greed of the few.

That is not what I am saying; it is what the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects has warned about the White Paper. Today, a Campaign to Protect Rural England branch has called the plans a disaster. Health academics have described the NHS White Paper as consolidating the “market paradigm” in the NHS. Although the Queen’s Speech contains promised new laws for property developers and private healthcare companies, there is absolutely nothing about workers’ rights. There is not a sight of the promised employment Bill. There is no ban on fire and rehire and no end to zero-hours contracts. There is nothing for more than 5.7 million people in low-paid or precarious work, nothing for the 4.2 million children growing up in poverty, nothing for the one in seven adults without access to the social care they need and absolutely nothing that comes close to tackling the climate emergency.

[Source]

20:45 Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)

The Government have a proud record on the environment. We were the first country to legislate for net zero by 2050. Since 2000, we have decarbonised our economy at the fastest rate of any G20 country. Since 2010, we have cut emissions by more than any other G7 country. What we have done with offshore wind is truly phenomenal, so it can be said, “If you vote blue, you truly get green.” However, there is more to be done, so I welcome the fact that the Environment Bill is back in the Queen’s Speech. I welcome the fact that it sets ambitious targets in law, and that it cuts across all Departments, so that each has an environmental focus.

I am focused on electric cars—I am one of the Conservative Environment Network’s electric car champions —so I am looking forward to June, and to hearing about our transport decarbonisation strategy. I want it mandated that all new build homes and offices have electric vehicle charging points.

I also want to talk about social housing. There is a lot of social housing in my constituency. I was delighted when the Lancaster West estate received just under £20 million from the Government to decarbonise the estate, which links the environment with housing. In our manifesto, we committed to a social housing White Paper. We have produced that White Paper, but we need to see more progress on it and we need to see it enacted. It was not mentioned by name in the Queen’s Speech, but I want us to continue the work on social housing to improve its quality and its regulation.

[Source]

20:54 Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)

The divergence between Governments goes beyond areas of devolved competence. In recent weeks, I have been contacted by hundreds of constituents concerned about the UK Government’s sweeping cuts to the aid budget, which are undermining any claim that this Government can have to global leadership, even as they prepare to host COP26. They are damaging the international development research co-ordinated at the University of Glasgow and other institutions across the country, and they will literally cost lives that no royal yacht, and certainly no Trident missiles, can save.

Perhaps that is why people in Glasgow North and across Scotland increasingly look to Holyrood as the centre of gravity of political leadership, not only on devolved issues, but for the representation and implementation of their views on Scotland’s role in the world—a role that includes being a proud European country. Glasgow looks forward to welcoming world leaders to COP26, and we will not be afraid to highlight Scotland’s ambition to slash emissions and achieve a just transition, even as this Tory Government dither and delay.

If we want Scotland to speak with a clear, progressive and ambitious voice on the world stage, the best way to do it will be with a seat at the top table. When the mandate of the new Scottish Parliament is respected and the people of Scotland are given that choice, I believe that that is the choice that they will make—to build back better from the pandemic and tackle the climate crisis on an equal basis alongside every other normal independent country in the world.

[Source]

21:03 Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)

Finally, as we build back better, we must build back greener too. By implementing the Environment Bill, we will set legally binding environment targets to tackle air pollution, cut plastic waste and revolutionise how we recycle. We continue to lead the way globally in acting on climate change, hosting the vital COP26 climate negotiations in November and rolling out our 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution. As we step away from carbon-intensive industries, particularly our steel and chemical industries, we must ensure that we facilitate people transitioning into new green collar jobs, which is why I welcome the lifetime skills guarantee.

[Source]